


Winter Chill

by peaches2217



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: Drabble, Fluff, I offer up my body as a sacrifice to the gods of winter, M/M, it is hot in upper Arklahoma, olilen, this is a prayer for cold weather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 20:40:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16226933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaches2217/pseuds/peaches2217
Summary: As much as Len hated the cold, he couldn’t bring himself to outright hate the wintertime itself. Too much to celebrate, too much to love.





	Winter Chill

December 10th, three-quarters of an hour until midnight. The night air was miserably cold; it stung at Len’s eyes and made them water, but the tears froze to his lashes before they had a chance to fall. Breathing was a pain — _breathing,_ an essential part of _living,_ was _painful_ — every inhale brought the sensation of drinking ice water after chewing minty gum, albeit without the pleasant taste of mint on his tongue.

Winter. Winter freaking sucked. He was a summer guy himself, always looking forward to the long, sunny days, the heat that kissed his face and neck and shoulders, the nights spent sleeping next-to-nude in the path of a fan. The household vacations to the beach. The fruity snow cones and banana smoothies and the fireflies that danced around the trees in the garden. Oh, he couldn’t wait for summer to roll around once more.

But as much as he hated the cold, he couldn’t bring himself to outright hate the wintertime itself. Too many days to celebrate, too much love in his heart for the things and people associated with this time of year. And on this particular night, the 10th of December, less than an hour until midnight, Len looked to his left and was reminded once more why he was willing to put up with such bone-chilling agony.

Oliver’s face was turned to the sky, his eye tracing the patterns of the stars above. Cloudless winter nights, he’d often told Len, were best for stargazing; the crisp air made the sky darker and the stars more brilliant or something like that. (Or maybe the ice crystals that froze to their eyelashes just made them think the stars were brighter than usual. That was Len’s theory, anyway.) His cheeks and nose were bright red, and with each breath, a misty cloud was released into the air, floating away and dissolving a second later.

It was almost cheating, Len had thought more than once. Oliver came from a place called Huddersfield, a word Len sometimes presumed meant “European Arctic Hell” in English. (“It really never got _that_ cold,” Oliver had corrected him last winter, but Len still had his doubts. Surely he was just bragging.) Whatever it meant, Oliver wasn’t all that affected by the cold. In the wintertime, he didn’t have to wear seven different layers of clothing and curl himself into a ball of blankets when the temperature dropped.

Unlike Len, Oliver didn’t look like death in the winter. Instead, the cold made him look… ethereal. Angelic. Completely unreal. Absolutely, astonishingly _beautiful._

A violent shiver overtook him, forcing him to turn his attention away from Oliver and towards trying to preserve what little body heat he had left. Oliver came out of his star-induced trance to pull the massive blanket they shared tighter over them, and he leaned further into Len to offer him more warmth. Len uncrossed his arms to wrap one around the other boy’s side; the other hand he shoved into his lap, a futile effort to bring feeling back into his stiff fingers.

“We can go in any time, you know,” Oliver said, wrapping both arms around Len. Ah, that was nice — he was so much warmer.

“‘M good,” Len replied. He tried to pull Oliver closer, claim more of his warmth, but there wasn’t so much as a millimeter of space between them already. “I-I l-l-like wash-watchin’ you s-s-s-stargaze.”

Oliver laughed, a bright, chiming tone that filled the air with sweetness and more misty clouds. “You’re hopeless.”

Suddenly the blanket was gone, and Len yelped at the intrusion of the cold, tried once more to burrow into Oliver. Just as soon as Oliver had shrugged the blanket from their shoulders, he pulled it over their heads, trapping the two of them in the darkness beneath it.

Now Len was cold _and_ blind. Great.

Something came into contact with his cheek. Oliver’s mittened hand, most likely. His nerves were too deadened to tell for sure.

“You’re freezing!”

“And y’somehoow ern’t?” Len slurred back, his numb, frozen lips preventing his words from forming completely. The wool of Oliver’s mitten was beginning to draw the chill from his skin. Sighing, he felt around for Oliver’s other hand, pressing it to his other cheek when he found it. “ _Mmmmmmmush be’r._ ”

The blanket over them shifted, and Len laughed when he realized Oliver was shaking his head. “Len, you dense git, I’m not worth getting frostbite over.”

“Nah’true!” Len bowed his head, smiling when his forehead came into contact with Oliver’s. “You’re worf e’ryfing.”

The skin where their faces connected suddenly became much warmer. Len was already preparing a teasing remark about how easy it was to make Oliver blush, but before he could so much as utter a word, those mittened hands pulled him closer, and suddenly his lips weren’t nearly as cold anymore.

“...I’ll explain that to the doctor when we take you in,” Oliver said some moments later when they came up for air. “‘Yes, you see, I understand that he’ll need to have his cheeks and nose cut off, but he got to see me make a certain face for a few minutes, so he insists it’s all worth it.’”

“I mean, I _would_ be fine wif it. As long as’ey keep my lips. ‘At’s all I really need, y’know?”

A round of chuckles passed between them, Oliver mumbling something about how _“You’re so hopeless, oh my God what am I going to do with you”_. And Len soaked in the attention, the warmth, the kisses and snuggles and whispered words of adoration.

He would never like the cold. But as long as Oliver was there to keep him warm, he’d gladly endure it.

**Author's Note:**

> It's nearing mid-October and it's still 90 degrees here. Help.


End file.
